4 ways to keep snakes out of your yard and garden

By GateHouse Florida

Thursday

Mar 7, 2019 at 9:08 AMMar 7, 2019 at 11:12 AM

If you're a homeowner with a bit of landscape or yard, you may encounter snakes on occasion. While you can try to keep snakes out of your yard, even the best measures aren’t 100 percent foolproof, according to America's Wetland Resources, which is based in Louisiana.

"There are no poisons or repellents that work, though some new 'breakthrough' is occasionally advertised. Horsehair ropes and trails of mothballs have consistently tested negative, and pest control operators have no answers," AWR said.

Venomous snake bites are rare, and you can readily take steps to keep them away. If you're an avid gardener, however, you may even want snakes in your slice of the great outdoors, since they diet on rodents and insects and can actually help protect your garden from pests.

"As a general rule, snakes are just as frightened of you as possibly you are of them and often they move as quickly as possible in the other direction," the North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension noted.

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But there are still plenty of valid ways to limit, or possibly eliminate, snakes from your yard, garden or home. Here are four tips from the pros on how to keep snakes out of your yard:

1. Seal crevices

Closer to your home, seal the openings where snakes like to set up shop. "Check the clearance of door bottoms, weep holes, openings where pipes enter, cracks and spaces under eaves," AWR recommended. "Don't neglect storerooms and sheds."

AWR added that sealing enough openings to make a difference is much more difficult if you own a raised wooden home.

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2. Tidy up the yard

Snakes might choose to live on your property or simply travel through, according to AWR. You want to make your property as inhospitable as possible, so concentrate on ridding it of any places snakes would consider good spots to hide. Remove debris — from piles of boards, tin, sticks and leaves to flatboats on the ground and piles of bricks or stone, AWR advised — and keep vegetation cut back.

3. Stop serving the snake's preferred menu

It's a win-win. When you take away potential hiding places for snakes, the spots where rat and mice families like to congregate are also eliminated.

Take this one step further, AWR advised, and get rid of the rodents that snakes like to snack on. You may want to involve a pest control agent, but you definitely want to practice anti-rodent hygiene, including not leaving pet food out for more than an hour or so, closing trash cans tightly and securing compost in a sealed container.

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4. Combat the climbers

If limbs from a neighbor's yard hang over your fence, snakes may use them as an entry to your place. Consider working with your neighbor to get them trimmed.

And if you live in an area where one or more venomous snakes are common, you may want to invest in a snake-proof fence. "Small areas where children play can be protected from all poisonous and most harmless snakes with a snake-proof fence," NCSU noted. "However, the cost of the fence may make it impractical to protect an entire yard."

After all this snake talk, AWR does have one bit of great news. "Snakes are rarely abundant in any one location." And if all your efforts fail and snakes do make their way into your yard, AWR recommended the ultimate failsafe.

"The best thing you can do for yourself and family is to teach everyone to respect snakes and to be on the lookout for them," according to the AWR website. "Remember, don't touch it with your hands. Use a shovel to place the snake in a deep bucket with a cover. The chances of your encountering a venomous species is remote, but possible enough to always be careful."

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GateHouse Media Group's Florida content team is based in West Palm Beach, Fla. GateHouse Florida stories, which run across digital, print and video platforms, are syndicated across 22 Florida newspaper markets.

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